[WATCH] How to Survive a Grenade Blast: Should You Be on Land or Jump in the Water?

Urian B., Tech Times 30 October 2020, 04:10 am

A recent experiment went viral on Facebook that tackles one of the most interesting questions ever; how to survive a grenade. When thinking about this question, the obvious reason would be to hide behind other objects or surfaces that could protect the person but to be more specific, would a grenade cause damage under water?

How do grenades work and what makes them so deadly?

For those that aren't familiar with how grenades function, this bomb works by pulling the pin off and throwing it, letting go of the handle, before it explodes in just five seconds. When the grenade explodes, it's 40 pieces of metal on the outside that wrap around the bomb then spread in almost every direction.

What happens is that when the handle is released from the clutches of a hand, it then does a spring release that automatically counts down and explodes in five seconds. The 40 pieces of metal are like bullets firing in different directions. The best way to avoid getting hit by a chunk of grenade is to lie down as far as possible from the grenade.

This would mean that in order to have just a slight chance of surviving, it is necessary to be at least 15 feet or 4.5 to 5 meters away from the grenade in order to be safe. The distance, although not a guarantee, could minimize the impact and might be a way to avoid the bits and pieces of grenade shooting in all directions.

The Facebook experiment tested the hypothesis that grenades in water can prevent the blast force

The recent video that went viral on Facebook tested out the hypothesis that a grenade in water can prevent the blast from spreading. To do this, they substituted people with balloons in order to measure how the blast would affect them.

It's well recorded that bullets under water are not able to travel too far due to the enormous drag force that stops the bullet after only a few feet. Of course this depends on the force of the bullet as well but generally, bullets do not travel that far in water.

Here's what the experiment showed and how it was done

In order to properly do the experiment, the channel of Mark Rober decided to do an experiment where they filled three different balloons half with water and half with air in order to copy the human body which is mostly water as well as mostly air. The balloons were then subjected to different experiments both done in the air, and in the water.

In the experiment, not a lot of things changed in the air (without the particles) but under water, it was seen that the blast wave simply passed through the body and did not destroy the balloons.

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Written by Urian Buenconsejo